The World is Running Out of Sand, and People Are Dying as a Result (medium.com)

You may be thinking: But sand is everywhere, there are whole deserts filled with the stuff. The sand in a desert, though, is useless as a construction material. The grains are out in the open and blow around for thousands of years. From a report: This rounds them off until they become useless as building blocks. Imagine trying to make a building with golf balls. In order to build, sand with angular edges must be used. The preferential type is the kind found in a river bed, sea, or beach. The fact that desert sand is useless makes for some unexpected situations. Despite being surrounded by endless miles of sand, the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, was built with sand imported from Australia. Dubai also imports sand for its beaches from Australia. Apparently desert sand doesn't do well in a beach atmosphere either. Sand also regenerates slowly. It takes thousands upon thousands of years for rock and sediment to break down into the usable grains we all rely on.

The world has seen a construction boom in recent years. The base that boom is built on, quite literally, is concrete. The United Nations estimates that the world consumes more than 40 billion tons of building aggregate -- sand, gravel, and crushed stone -- each year. Some estimates predict consumption will top 50 billion tons by next year, with China alone gobbling up much of the world's concrete supply as it undergoes a massive urbanization. According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, between 2011 and 2013 China used more concrete than the U.S. used throughout the entire 20th century. Other parts of Asia, such as India, are rapidly expanding as well. The urbanization driving this construction boom, and increasing reliance on concrete, shows no signs of slowing. By 2030 the U.N. expects 60 percent of the world's population to live in urban areas.

[...] One of the prime issues with sand is that it's heavy. Heavy items incur large transportation costs, especially over a long distance. The scarcity and high prices attract the attention of criminals. Why go to a legal mining area when sand can be extracted for next to nothing elsewhere? "Sand mafias" are groups of criminals that illegally dredge sand from areas where extraction is prohibited. Since they're not following laws, all environmental protocols are ignored. Often rivers are illegally mined, destroying the habitat for fish and fishermen. Sometimes land from private villages is even taken over by these mafias. If they're confronted, violence often results. And according to a 2015 Wired story on sand mafias in India, police are typically of little help: "The conventional wisdom says that many local authorities accept bribes from the sand miners to stay out of their business -- and not infrequently, are involved in the business themselves."

Comments

#1 China should reduce its appetite for resources

[Anonymous Coward]

>According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, between 2011 and 2013 China used more concrete than the U.S. used throughout the entire 20th century.

Stop complaining that the US and Europe are taking all the resources, fuel and polluting.

2/3rd+ of the world's population, China + India + Brasil + Indonesia + Mexico + Pakistan needs to bring their environmental usage and pollution levels much closer to the USA and Europe's before the USA and Erurope should do anything significant.

Being from a large third world country, laws on the books mean little since they are mostly ignored and paid off through bribes.

Pollution levels should be measured by air quality samples taken in the largest 10 cities in each of the countries. It can be measured reliably unlike measurements of oil/coal consumed which ignore consumption/exploitation of other natural resources - burning of tropical rain forests.

All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

(INSERT SCARY PROBLEM) is due to overpopulation. All of them. The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100. All other problems will solve themselves.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

But as long as we have ridiculous ideas about the sanctity of life and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people you won't see a solution to that problem.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for volunteering! Your sacrifice will not be forgotten!

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[hazardPPP]

But as long as we have ridiculous ideas about the sanctity of life and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people you won't see a solution to that problem.

The place having the biggest construction boom in the past two decades has no such ridiculous ideas. That place is China. One-child policy anyone?

The places with the highest birth rates also tend to be places where the majority of the people live in shanty towns or similar and do not actually use a lot of concrete for construction.

It's not just about the number of people. It's about their standard of living.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

But as long as we have ridiculous ideas about the sanctity of life and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people you won't see a solution to that problem.

The place having the biggest construction boom in the past two decades has no such ridiculous ideas. That place is China. One-child policy anyone?

You're a bit behind the times. China rescinded its "one child" policy in 2015.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Archtech]

The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100.

Washington has that well in hand. Indeed, it may well exceed that goal by a factor of 33%, any time now.

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the title "The World is Running Out of Sand, and People Are Dying as a Result" then it is a self correcting problem: as soon as enough people die, problem solved!

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

But dying at the hand of the mafia hurts. Not being born doesn't.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

...and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people ...

Well I guess that's one way to reduce population...

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

He said reduce by 2100. Nobody needs to be killed the birth rate just needs to be drastically reduced.
That problem will be solved starting in 2 years when the Democrats gain a Supermajority and make gender reassignment mandatory for all biological Males.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Xenocrates]

Yes, because they were headed for a population crash, where the working generations would be substantially smaller than the generations it was replacing. Additionally, while the official policy was rescinded, the cultural impacts will still be felt for generations, and the skewing of gender birth rates can also impact population growth, as men outnumber women 118 to 100 at birth, meaning that population growth could not be as rapid per capita, as while men are important in reproduction, they do not do the majority of the work, nor are they the rate limiting factor.

China will start seeing it's population reduce in size. Depending on cultural factors, they may continue to decline in population, even if they hit replacement birth rates for the latest generations, due to the size of those generations being substantially smaller than those before them. They may accelerate the decline, should they like many industrialized nations, end up settling at a birth rate that is slightly below the replacement rate over the long term (See Germany, Japan). They may rebound and either stabilize, or begin growing again, if culturally they end up convinced to exceed the replacement rate, which would be best for China's economy (contraction of the demand and labor pools are typically bad for markets), while being worst for the environment.

However, we also need to watch India, Africa, and the middle-east, as those regions have large growth potential. Should India get sanitation and infant mortality under control, their population will grow even faster (until the normal cultural reductions in birth rate occur, if they do). Should Africa or the middle-east get their various armed conflicts under control, and stop losing so many men, women, and children to warfare, they may very well see population booms due to that, as well as likely seeing some increase in reproduction due to the increased wealth from no longer diverting resources to destruction.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you have all the answers, why don't you get the ball rolling by killing yourself?

No?

Funny how it's easy to say "Kill 75% of the world's population" when you exempt yourself from the group that will be killed.

Finding a solution that technically works is pretty much useless if you know it its not going to happen.

Technically a problem for the United States is a lot of politicians, and in particular republicans think, "It is okay because it is for a higher cause."

I think that is part of the reason Republicans held the senate last time is they desperately want to stop abortion by any means necessary, and planting their judges in to uphold crazy ass laws, is a means they are fine with, even if it means the country goes to hell in every other way.

So saying, everyone should have less kids, is about the same as saying everyone should think rationally and base their decisions on science and reason. Both are technically true, but neither address how to get there in a realistic way and, in general, there are many interests that will fight any attempt to give science and reason greater sway, since that makes people harder to manipulate, and they don't want that.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

And replaced it with a 2 child policy. Guess what, that's still below replacement level...

Most people didn't want the second child anyway, so now they are trying to come up with other incentives to get women to have more babies.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

But I alone can only abort so many fetuses and hand out condoms to so many teenagers, it has to be a group effort!

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mark-t]

Or, you may realize that it's not a problem... the 3rd derivative of world population has been negative for some time now, (since at least the mid 1960's). We now are clearly within the nearly linear portion of a logistic growth curve, and can fairly safely project that the world's population will be largely stable at a little more than 10b or so, and that it should *never* exceed 11billion.

Interesting point of fact, because the production capacity increases as the number of people grows, there is no reason to think that this size population will result in any worse shortages for segments of the world population than we currently have... the problems, if any, will be caused by limitations in distribution capacity rather than the raw ability to produce what people need.

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

"the problems, if any, will be caused by limitations in distribution capacity rather than the raw ability to produce what people need"
There is this thing called global warming that many people are concerned about - CO2 emissions will certainly increase as population increases. So even though population is stabilizing, it would be really nice if we could bypass this 'population momentum' increase of 2-3 billion

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep yo feckin-A neez closed ... Babette. Keep yo zipper ... lipped Bosco. EOF.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[LynnwoodRooster]

You're behind the times, too... The one-child policy was replaced with the two child policy, which still will shrink the population.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

(INSERT SCARY PROBLEM) is due to overpopulation. All of them. The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100. All other problems will solve themselves.

Just how many psychopathic leaders do we have to look at in our history to understand that killing millions and millions of citizens doesn't solve anything?

Fuck you for not understanding history and bringing forth that bullshit. The population needs to get under control, we don't need a goddamn 75% loss of life.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

But as long as we have ridiculous ideas about the sanctity of life and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people you won't see a solution to that problem.

Yes, anti-abortion measures are certainly the problem. It couldn't possibly be what causes women to become impregnated so easily. Let's not look for humans to be fucking responsible adults or anything. Best to let children be and bend the world around their irresponsibility while ass-raping morals at the same time.

Yeah, that's the answer.

Killing humans won't solve this problem any more than killing cats and dogs does, and ignoring root-cause identifies the real ignorance.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Gravis Zero]

The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100.

I'm looking forward to doing my patriotic duty to celebrate Purge day! ;)

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and to do that we need to tackle the whole growth-yay delusion. Put bluntly: if we don't find an alternative way for people/countries to succeed that doesn't involve perpetual growth in population, consumption, profit, sales... basically everything... we are quite literally imitating locusts, and we all know what happens to locusts once the plague has run its course.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[l0ungeb0y]

Shut up and crawl back into your grave Malthus

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

We should put economic forces to work.

DNA is taken from every individual. Every person gets one "replacement" credit at birth. Every child that is born results in 0.5 credits charged to the mother and 0.5 charged to the father. All social benefits (welfare, food stamps, EITC, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, even Social Security and Medicare) are increased to those who still have their 0.5 credits. Social benefits are "standard" for those who have 0 credits. Those who are in "debt" due to having negative credits will have all social benefits (for the rest of their life) adjusted down -- perhaps divided by two for each 0.5 credit they are in debt.

Multiple births when NOT using fertility treatments that increase the risk of multiple births will count as only one child for this calculation.

Stillborn babies don't cost credits. Perhaps babies who die before the age of five don't count either.

Of course, offer free abortions -- esp. for rape victims.

Perhaps a rape victim who chooses to keep her child gets 0.5 credits back if/when the rapist is found and convicted -- and the rapist is charged 1.0 credits.

If a father can't be determined (the mother won't identify the father and/or the father isn't in the DNA database), the full credit is charged to the mother. If the father is later identified and is still alive at that time, a 0.5 credit is returned to the mother and 0.5 is charged to the father.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

kill yourself. the less liberal fucking dirtbag scum in the world, the better. so please, KYS, subhuman fucking cunt. you and your existence mean nothing.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

The problem is, simply put, that the "first world" consumes at a rate that is not even sustainable if only the first world consumes at this rate, and that the rest of the world also wants to do just that. China is already getting there. If Africa decides they want to live like Europe (instead of just in Europe, as right now) we're FUBAR.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

Ass-raping wouldn't be the problem... sigh, did you miss biology classes or did you get abstinence-only sex ed?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

Interesting concept. Do you get to buy/sell replacement credits?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

you and your existence mean nothing.

Aww. But I thought every life is sacred?

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, the problem solves itself if you sterilize all but the best women. Planned parenthood sponsored abortions are 70% minority and only 30% white. Did you mean to support eugenics or were you tricked into it?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

and you want to take the guns away also?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

The solar system has room for a *lot* more than 9 billion people. Mars has the same land area as all of Earth. Venus has over 90 times more oxygen. Ridiculous-scale engineering is required, but I think humans can colonize 3 planets in this system with enough effort. The moon can be mined for solar shields to ship to Venus L1. Those shields could reduce the temp to 88F within 60 years if all sunlight was diverted. Planet-scale industry could then take hold.

There's enough material in this system for $70B of raw materials for every human currently living. It's a matter of figuring out how to utilize what's available.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Can'tNot]

Ten billion is approximately five times as many people as the world can support, at a consumption rate equal to the average American. Unless your response is, "That's fine, we just need to make sure that the rest of the world stays poor." then you need to rethink your stance here.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mark-t]

Perhaps you need to understand the difference between being able supply more than what people need as opposed to being able to supply their greed.

Nobody needs to be poor... but nobody really needs to have orders of magnitude more wealth as anybody else either.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

It is until you threaten to take the lives of others. Which you just did, to basically every person on the planet that isn't you.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mcvos]

The most effective way to reduce population growth, is education. In highly educated countries, women are more likely to work and less likely to have a lot of children. Good social security also reduces the need to have children in order to ensure you're taken care of when you're old. Prosperity and equality seem to be big factors in reducing the number of children people have.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[arglebargle_xiv]

In any case the problem of the sand running out is trivially solved, you just flip the world over and it all runs back in the other direction. That's why the poles swap every few hundred thousand years or so, it's so the sand can run back the other way.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[XxtraLarGe]

(INSERT SCARY PROBLEM) is due to overpopulation. All of them. The answer is not to waste time and money trying to treat all the symptoms; the answer is to fix them all at once by setting a goal to reduce the world's population by 75% by the year 2100. All other problems will solve themselves.

But as long as we have ridiculous ideas about the sanctity of life and every sperm is sacred in the heads of people you won't see a solution to that problem.

You've provided a self-defeating argument. If you don't believe in sanctity of life, then what's the problem with people dying from (INSERT SCARY PROBLEM)?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

And the "first world" will solved these problems too. Oh, but mother Giea will get angry if we have nuclear power. Maybe we will figure things out after the distributed failure if the wind turbines when the bearings reach their lifetime.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody needs to be poor... but nobody really needs to have orders of magnitude more wealth as anybody else either.

So what's your solution? Confiscate it from the rich and redistribute it? It's their toiling and property, not yours to give away.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Can'tNot]

So your solution is communism? Communism will save us from overpopulation?

I've got no beef with communism, I'm not even strictly a pragmatist. I appreciate the need for idealism and idealistic solutions, but it's necessary to retain some sense of proportion here. What you're saying is that we don't need to ask people to have fewer children, because we can just have total, worldwide, economic upheaval instead. As though that were the easier solution, or more likely.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Crypto Gnome]

Where's the Zombie Apocalypse when you need it?

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

You are the only one making any threats. I believe they are referring to contraception and abortion, possibly sterilization if you want to hit the 75% reduction mentioned by the OP.

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think lawyers come from???

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is politicians, and (corporate interests are urging politicians) to make it sound scary that a population to trend lower as a result of fewer children.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mark-t]

You don't need to ask people to have fewer children. That happens essentially automatically over the course of a few generations with continued access to improved education and health care.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Can'tNot]

I'm aware that rich people have fewer children. You said as much above when you gave ten billion as the equilibrium point for population, that is the reason why the population is expected to equilibrate at ten billion. And then I said, "That's not good enough, that's still too many." And then you replied, "It's good enough if everyone agrees to share what we have and live modestly, instead of fighting over wealth." And I said, "Okay, sure, but that's not going to happen. Couldn't we focus on an actual implementable solution instead?"

Rich have fewer children, but rich people also consume more. A lot more. Way more than is accounted for by the voluntary reduction in children.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mark-t]

Your proclamation of "it's not good enough" is built on the premise of wanting more than one's fair share.... ie, not being "good" in the first place.

The fact is that it *IS* good enough... the fact that it's not what people might necessarily *want* is irrelevant.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Can'tNot]

the fact that it's not what people might necessarily *want* is irrelevant

What? What people want is the issue here. It can't be irrelevant, it's the whole point: we're talking about competing wants. Some people want more children, some people want more stuff. If people don't want more children then we have no problem. If people don't want stuff then we have no problem. Either one of those conditions would be sufficient.

But we do have a problem.

Re: All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

The problem with this idea is to identify those "best" women. Every attempt so far failed miserably.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

My concept is not the elimination of existing life but avoiding spawning more.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Opportunist]

That I value existing life over potentially future one.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[mark-t]

The underlying problem is still not overpopulation, but bad resource management and usage. The population is going to rise to an asymptote of just over 10billion people regardless of anything you or I might do.

Re:All these problems share a common cause

[Can'tNot]

Bad resource management is going to continue regardless of anything you or I might do. Pretending that the problem is the one thing and not the other is missing the forest for the trees: overpopulation and poor resource management are convergent problems. You're right though - I am not optimistic about our future in this regard.

That said, I'm not a quitter. I'm not about to throw my hands up in the air and say, "Well the world's getting warmer and we could stop it, but... it's going to continue regardless of anything you or I might do. Let's just give up."

Overpopulation is a much easier problem to combat than poor resource management, if you think about exactly what that means. "Poor resource management" is a very simple way to describe a vast array of detrimental practices, from over consumption of animal products, to dependency on fossil fuels, to excessive use of plastics, to overeating, to disposable packaging, over fishing, over use of antibiotics, urban sprawl, deforestation, etc. etc. ... It's a very, very long list.

Or we could just have fewer children. If I'm not a quitter, if I'm not going to throw my hands in the air and just give up, then that seems, by far, the most productive avenue of approach. Of course, there's no reason why we can't work on both things.

60 percent of the world's population to live in ur

[dschiptsov]

Okay. From where and whom the food will come from? Also, mountain rivers have almost endless supply of sand, at least it is sustainable for local development.

Really...?

[Anonymous Coward]

the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, was built with sand imported from Australia

Really? And that is evidence that most San in Saudi Arabia is "useless" for construction?
And the only place high quality sand could be obtained from by the cost conscious Emirs' is of course, from nearby Australia, whose deserts are blessed with grainer grains. Going to, say, Pakistan or India or Kenya was naturally out of the question.
I expect every building, every large building constructed in the Kingdom since the middle ages has, naturally, used specially imported river sand from whichever sand supplier paid for this media report.

By this point, I just find myself wondering who -- precisely -- is the target audience of the propaganda? Large corporate quantity surveyors? Construction CEOs? Government's looking to upgrade infrastructure. After all, everyone knows you can't just use ANY old sand to mix your concrete.

Re:Really...?

[Luckyo]

Young people are the target. The idea is that since young people are rather ignorant of how world works due to lack of experience, they can be primed with certain kinds of propaganda.

Most of us older folks already have enough experience to know that most of these hyperbolic "small problem we're going to sensationalize" claims are bogus. If price of sand goes up enough, we'll simply start using crushed rock instead. That's it.

Re:Really...?

[DanielRavenNest]

Stone dust, the remains from rock crushing for gravel, has already been tested for concrete. It works fine:

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

This shouldn't be surprising, since it is the same stuff the bigger gravel comes from. If there is not enough of the dust, we can just crush the rock finer until there is.

Re: Really...?

[Type44Q]

...we'll simply start using crushed rock instead

Can't we just let them have Florida and Long Island?? We could even include the residents at no extra charge...

Re:Really...?

[hey!]

The other thing that you get good at as you get older is spotting a straw men and ad hominems.

The problems being reported in this is not indicative of our "running out of sand", but the price of cheap, legally-mined sand rising. This is how economics works: in a capitalist society you'll never run out of a mineral resource because it will get priced out of practicality, leaving you with plenty of that commodity still in the ground that you just can't use. This has three consequences: (1) people try to get more efficient at using the resource; (2) people look for alternatives; (3) the rising price of the commodity fosters conflict and crime, until the first two consequences succeed in reducing the demand.

So we'll always be able to make natural sand-based concrete; it'll just be too expensive to use as liberally as we do today. That's the reason we aren't using crushed stone today: it's physically feasible, but economically pointless. If it ever becomes economically feasible to use crushed stone, either there's been some kind of rock-breaking technological breakthrough, or we're paying a lot more for concrete.

A world in which concrete was expensive would look very different, and transitioning to such a world would likely involve some societal stress.

Re:Really...?

[LordONE]

This is how economics works: in a capitalist society you'll never run out of a mineral resource because it will get priced out of practicality, leaving you with plenty of that commodity still in the ground that you just can't use. This has three consequences: (1) people try to get more efficient at using the resource; (2) people look for alternatives; (3) the rising price of the commodity fosters conflict and crime, until the first two consequences succeed in reducing the demand.

You mean like gold, oil and diamonds? Once the price goes up, it's more economically feasible to invest in getting the stuff out of the ground. Which in turn increases supply, which in turn reduces price. That's why fracking is a thing.

Re:Really...?

[Luckyo]

Not really. Sand is a tiny fraction of cost of concrete. Crushed rock can't be all that much more expensive, seeing how it's used for concrete TODAY according to the story itself. It's just more expensive enough to use sand at this point in time.

Like I noted above, your knee jerk reaction is completely in line with how this kind of propaganda works. It primes you to think among the certain lines, catastrophising a tiny problem.

Re:Really...?

[hey!]

If crushed rock were economical to use in Dubai concrete, they wouldn't ship sand from Australia. They'd crush rock from a local quarries. It would make sense to set up a crushing plant because Dubai uses a huge amount of concrete and has plenty of rock.

Sand commodity costs represent 2% of the finished price of concrete. That means it represents a bit more than 2% of the input costs, but we can reasonably conclude it's not a limiting factor in concrete use *at present*. But remember we're talking about a future scenario in which sand is sufficiently expensive that we produce aggregates by a method which anybody could, but which nobody currently finds profitable.

Which is not to say concrete will disappear, only that it will be more expensive, and even modest increases in concrete production costs will have big economic effects... and count those impacts on tarmac as well. Now if we *could* switch to crushed rock before the price of sand rises that would be a good thing, because of the ecological and social impact of mining river sand. But it would make practically all the infrastructure and commercial building we do more expensive.

Re:Really...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Running out of sand.....boring (no pun intended) headline.

Add "People are dying"....oh, that is much more interesting and gets the click bait.

So, what do we do, we read the click bait which then encourages more click bait. That is how you get new which, if you read carefully, is either sensationalized click bait or opinion piece touted as news (i.e. CNN, MSNBC, etc.).

Re: Really...?

[iggymanz]

False, that type of sand already used. Just adds some percent to cost of concrete and commercial buildings recoup their construction costs many times over. There is no problem, no cause for panic. The world will not run out of sand for construction, that is a lie and soundbite for someone with agenda to profit

Re: Really...?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem being discussed isnt that. The problem is that is something commonish goes up in value, the same idiot meth heads that broke into houses and rural street lights to steal copper will dig up a beach or river. The same types occasionally steal cobble stones from historic districts, or headlights from cars, bc they heard they cost $100 to replace and think they "found" $100. The thing itself is worth only pennies, but the damage they do removing it is enormous. Better example, think about someone stealing STOP signs bc they think they can get $20 for it from a scrapper. They are wrong, but the missing sign will result in risk, death, property damage for the community in general.

That is the threat.

Re: Really...?

[Luckyo]

Exactly this. It's not that there's actual risk with sand. It's that economic opportunism by organised criminal networks can cause significant impact.

This applies to everything from stealing cabling for scrap metal to dumping toxic waste. Italian mafia for example is well known for doing the latter for profit.

Re: Really...?

[FuzzyDaddy2]

Crushed rock is pieces of rock the size of driveway gravel. Its used today but you need much smaller pieces of rock (i.e. sand) to fill in the space to keep the amount of cement reasonable. You could crush rock further into sand, but that would presumably take a lot more energy than it takes to make the gravel sized crushed rock.

Re:Really...?

[Anonymous Coward]

No that was a technology that made petro fuels cheaper.
It's why natural gas got soooooo cheap as a side thing and why LNG electro plants have taken off.

Oh wait I see what you're saying. Sorry I misread

Too many of us

[Anonymous Coward]

If sand is a problem (water, food and in an obscure way air if you consider too much CO2 is because of too much energy use), then there are too many people. We keep trying to find ways to make more room available but there is no free lunch. Either people are going to start being fed gruel kept in pods and entertained by VR (sounds like a movie eh) or we are going to get serious about world overpopulation. Don't get me wrong, I don't see depopulation as easy because society has been built on increasing the base of the pyramid with each passing generation.

Re: Too many of us

[Anonymous Coward]

"Either people are going to start being fed gruel kept in pods and entertained by VR (sounds like a movie eh) or we are going to get serious about world overpopulation"
Too late it was a movie: Ready player one, pods=stacked trailer homes

Re: Too many of us

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant the matrix

Actually the problem is not concrete

[Applehu Akbar]

We're running out of sand because of the silicon required by all the cryptocurrency mining servers being built around the world. Someday a way will be found of grinding them into the aggregate we need.

Re: Actually the problem is not concrete

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way Dubai didnâ(TM)t have their construction costs and sand needs known way ahead of time. If sand is a problem for a construction project, they should have googled sand prices. Most plain old soil and dirt work fine too.

repeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this a repeat from last yer?

Plastic!

[I75BJC]

Since Plastic lasts for centuries and is such a problem, let the scientists make Plastic Sand! The USA National Labs can do this; as well as MIT, etc., etc.

Re:Plastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

3D print sand on demand!

We are running out of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

We are running out of every non-recyclable material on earth, wether it is sand, copper, oil or anything you can think of. We live in a finite planet, and thus nothing can be mined forever.
The only real question is at what pace are things running out, and how easy it is to replace them? The market's laws will rise price of things the less available they are, until eventually it will be more price convenient to use an alternative. With sand in particular, it eventually rise the price of it so it will be conveniente to use some process to dessert sand or bring it from far away places.

Re:We are running out of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is the existence of sources that are cheap but with large collateral damage. Somewhere, $1M of oil can be extracted, but it will ruin $10M worth of freshwater. Somewhere, $1M of sand can be extracted, but it will ruin $10M worth of fishes. If prices rise, then some people will extract from those sources (illegally).

Re: We are running out of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

The running out of stuff theme is getting old. Ironically, there is also an article in the New York Times today about how a Russian fishing village is being buried by the accumulation of sand. Two plus two equals zero?

Re: We are running out of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Copper is almost 100% recyclable.

Slashdot has had some good ones

[Crashmarik]

Like the story about how bamboo bicycles would be the next big thing and would be more sustainable than aluminum when aluminum is 5% of the Earth's crust, but this one takes the cake. What a testament to what great lives we have made that we need to scare ourselves with such obvious B.S.

90% of the earths crust is silicates. You want them a given size or shape ? Hit them or melt them. I'll worry about having enough sunlight for everyone on the planet before I worry about concrete aggregates.

Oh one other thing I might look for here. Who will profit from having controls placed on sand extraction here odds are they are financing the scare propaganda.

Re: Slashdot has had some good ones

[javaman235]

I had to look that up, but yeah, true.
https://www.sandatlas.org/comp...
Shocked about the amount of oxygen too, I didnâ(TM)t know that.
There may actually be sand mafias, but people underestimate how stupid people can be. There are almost surely industrial processes for making sand however you want, which could be powered by a dam on the river rather than ripping up the whole river.

Re:Slashdot has had some good ones

[Anonymous Coward]

Like with most things on this planet, it's not a matter of what can be done, but at what price it can be done. Sand is cheap. That's why we use it. If sand is no longer cheap because the right kind of sand is not nearby, then we need to look for alternatives, and buildings will become more expensive. This may not be all bad, because concrete is a major source of atmospheric CO2, but the societal impact will be felt.

Re:Slashdot has had some good ones

[Ogive17]

Did you even bother to read the summary?

Re:Slashdot has had some good ones

[Crashmarik]

Yes I did. I'd just put it up there with the 5 or 6 times the world has managed to hit peak oil, or the Club Rome report that had every resource vanishing and their prices rocketing by the year 2000, uniquely funny in light of the commodities price collapses that had mines going bankrupt because they couldn't service interest on debt.

Re: Slashdot has had some good ones

[Papaspud]

Thanks for the link, interesting.

Re: Slashdot has had some good ones

[iggymanz]

summary is bullshit. Sand from crushed rock is already used in many places, it's just a more expensive. There is no problem, there is no shortage. Alarmist bullshit is what this is. Increasing the cost of a concrete poured 5 percent won't end civilization

Seems like Hyperbole nonsense

[pablo_max]

A 3 minute google search and I was able to find many, many articles outlining uses for desert sand. Among those uses... building materials.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90...

Re: Seems like Hyperbole nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, great. Let's use a material that liquidates when it gets wet.

Re:Seems like Hyperbole nonsense

[willy_me]

If you are building the tallest building in the world, you use the best construction materials possible. You have no other choice - you are pushing the bounds of construction technology. But such construction is not performed that often.

For sidewalks, single dwelling homes, and the numerous other applications that consume the majority of sand - desert sand is probably just fine. One might have to tweak their designs to accommodate the sand but that is a small price to pay if it allows use of a construction material that is readily available.

Re:Seems like Hyperbole nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are building the tallest building in the world you have the money to make sand from raw rock by crushing it, so yeah, no tears for them.

Re:Seems like Hyperbole nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article that you linked:
"It turns out that not all sand is created equal. “Desert sand,” the inventors explain, “has little use for construction, as its grains are too smooth and fine to bind together.” "

The possibility to use desert sand as building material is a new development.

Also stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

WHere I live whole hill sides in ecologically fragile environments are strip mined for pumice. What's the primary market for pumice? so-called "acid washed" jeans.

Fashion is destroying endangers species habitat here in the USA too.

Re:Also stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

"The largest use of pumice in the United States is the production of lightweight concrete blocks and other lightweight concrete products...The second most common use of pumice is in landscaping and horticulture."

So, no. The primary market is not acid washed jeans.

This kind of dishonesty is why people have distrust towards environmental issues. Don't do it.

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[sg_oneill]

mountain rivers have almost endless supply of sand

Ahhh city folk.

No, no they do not. And I don't know if you've seen sand mining in action but it basically strips off the top soil out of a huge region of land , the mine closes 2-3 years after it opens and leaves the whole place completely environmentally wrecked. Your lucky if you get spares grass for cows, but probably not because all that soils been shredded out for the mineral sand and what remains is just bad dirt.

Its about the most un-endless mining you can think of, and rivers are frigging worth. You have about 3-4 feet of the stuff to dig up aaaand then thats it.

Planet Money - Peak Sand

[Bruinwar]

Interesting Planet Money podcast about sand. Mostly about beach sand. https://www.npr.org/templates/...

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[sg_oneill]

Goddamn iPhone typing. By "spares" read sparse. By "worth" read "worse".

my suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Find someone with really steady hands that can hold the "unusable" sand against a grindstone or sandpaper to grind down the smooth edges. Repeat 6 times and you've got little sand cubes that you can glue together to make bigger sand cubes. It might take a few billion years to make a building foundation, but you can't rush perfection.

Solution

[Sqreater]

Go pound desert sand.

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to say this.
Lasers + sand = melted, uneven crystals.
It happens naturally with lightning all the time. You can speed that process and control it with lasers.
In fact, you could make micron-perfect sand aggregates of specific sizes for different use cases.

SURE, it is going to cost money to do, but it will end up being done regardless.
Good thing about lasers is they are very efficient and ones capable of melting sand to create crystals of the desired sizes don't use that much power all things considered. It will still cost VASTLY more to distribute that artificial sand.
Funny thing about this is the sand we need is stuck in a place with obscene amounts of sunlight, so it is zero problem to slap millions of solar panels down there.
On top of that, those solar panels arranged properly could help reverse desertification by cooling the land a bit.
An alternative is huge solar power plants with tarps to create an updraft but also create a micro-climate under said tarp for growing. Many designs out there people have been discussing for years that could be done.

People will naturally whine about the "very delicate desert life" being snuffed out, yeah, well, too bad. If it was good at survival, it would be everywhere. Checkmate, Christians.
Snuffing out a tiny amount of life to save billions of other lifeforms is hardly a hard decision, even if that desert life could hold potential to cure many illnesses. It's not like it is impossible to sequence them.
Plus, there is more than enough desert there to keep up with demand for centuries without even denting its size too much.
By then, we'll be using asteroid-sand. Or dead.

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you still missed "your lucky."

sand for glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use that desertsand to make glass and use the edgy sandgrains for building.
It's not like that desertsand is utter useless, just no one interested to invest.
Using edgy sandgrains for glass is an utter waste imo.

Sensationalists can go pound sand!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait...

Meh, sand is small rocks. The Earth is made of rock.

TFS is bullshit.

Dubai is surrounded by endless kilometers of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Not miles. The only countries still not using the metric system are the USA, Belize, Myanmar and Liberia. Not the United Arab Emirates.

pumped slurry

[Anonymous Coward]

no expert here, but i doubt dessert sand is no good for concrete.
the problem, as someone pointed out already, is that that building is a 50/50 project of ego and marvel of engineering so really the "best" stuff had to be used.
the problem with dessert sand might be that it doesn't have enough calcium carbonate content? stuff from the ocean is like dead see shells.
i assume that dessert sand is just really small rocks and that is the problem. stone-gravel and sand are fillers for concrete, cement just being the glue to hold it together. as with anything, the weakest element will give out first...
maybe they can use their own dessert sand to make a conveyor belt that transport all the waste from that tower to a recycling plant?

Re:pumped slurry

[mikael]

Deserts used to be ocean bed. They actually find entire whale skeletons in the Middle East deserts.

Re:pumped slurry

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all deserts.

Sand mining project in rural area angers everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

This just happened last month... http://www.sandiegouniontribun...

Hemp FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Start using hempcrete in areas where it can be used and save concrete needs.

Sick and fucking tired of the stigma against using hemp. Our world was ready to use the shit out of it 80 years ago before bullshit propaganda spread.

CAPTCHA: disjoint

if only we could make sand.....

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.metso.com/showroom/construction/new-type-of-crushed-sand-to-replace-natural-sand-in-concrete-production/

https://www.google.com/search?q=manufactured+sand&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS821US821&oq=manufactured+sand&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j0l4.5782j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.dezeen.com/2018/03/24/desert-sand-could-offer-low-carbon-concrete-alternative/

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/material-made-from-desert-sand-matches-concretes-strength/520405/

Re:Dubai is surrounded by endless kilometers of sa

[geekmux]

Not miles. The only countries still not using the metric system are the USA, Belize, Myanmar and Liberia. Not the United Arab Emirates.

They're surrounded by a metric fuckton of worthless shit.

Better?

Reprocessing sand

[mikael]

Couldn't they use a solar furnace to fuse the sand grains together, then grind them down to get grains of the right size?

Re:Reprocessing sand

[Anonymous Coward]

That creates glass, not rock.

Re:Reprocessing sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just use a hammer mill to produce an engineered product with the desired properties.

Re:Sand mining project in rural area angers everyo

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to rename the place "Sandy Ego".

Running out......again

[Charcharodon]

I arrived on the planet since 1971. We've been running out of one thing or another every year since then. Fresh water, oil, coal, forests, landfill space, non-communist countries, people who believe in Jesus, people to fill hi-tech jobs, people willing to do shitty jobs, people willing to work, people willing have more people (babies), rare earth elements, cool temperatures, arable land, affordable housing, steel, aluminum, wetlands, darter snails, coast line, owls, money for schools/retirement/fire/police/road/military, we've run out of time to save the Earth.

You know what has actually run out since 1971. Not a god damn thing. Not once, not ever.

Every time it has been corporations whining that they had to pay $.04 per ton for something instead of $.01, or people who want to pay $100 a month for rent in a city where the cheapest 400 square foot apartment costs $500,000 to buy and rent is around $1900 a month, or people who want you and the gov't to fund their pet program so they don't have to do honest work. They get all worked up and make a lot of noise hoping to get idiot politicians to support their cause and pass a law that forces things back or provides them with a subsidy, in other words steal money out of your pocket to put it into theirs.

The only thing that has run out since then is my patience. Socialism and crony capitalism needs to be once and for all labeled the environmental toxin that it is and steps taken to get rid of it. We could treat it like we do any other toxic waste, load it up on ships and dump it in the 3rd world.

Somalia would be perfect.

Re:Running out......again

[aliquis]

Somalia would be perfect.

But that's where Swedes come from!

Re:Running out......again

[Anonymous Coward]

I arrived on the planet since 1971. We've been running out of one thing or another every year since then. Fresh water, oil, coal, forests, landfill space, non-communist countries, people who believe in Jesus, people to fill hi-tech jobs, people willing to do shitty jobs, people willing to work, people willing have more people (babies), rare earth elements, cool temperatures, arable land, affordable housing, steel, aluminum, wetlands, darter snails, coast line, owls, money for schools/retirement/fire/police/road/military, we've run out of time to save the Earth.

You know what has actually run out since 1971. Not a god damn thing. Not once, not ever.

I arrived in '57 and it's been the same way, funny how we still have the things we had from back then. Only difference now is we have more.

Re:Running out......again

[Tablizer]

Socialism and crony capitalism needs to be once and for all labeled the environmental toxin that it is

As long as humans run the show, you'll probably get one or the other or a mix.

Re:Running out......again

[quenda]

You know what has actually run out since 1971. Not a god damn thing. Not once, not ever.

You sound like one of those people who think peak oil means no oil.
In 1971, my drinking water came from rainwater collected in dams. Now it is mostly from ocean desalination and underground sources.
House prices have risen dramatically with population growth so much that the majority of young people cannot afford to bu a home with back yard, except on the distant fringes.
    Wild ocean fish has become a luxury item. But chicken is cheap, or farmed fish from Asia.

Re:Running out......again

[thegarbz]

You know what has actually run out since 1971. Not a god damn thing. Not once, not ever.

Must be nice for you living in a rich country where you can simply import what you don't have.

Back in reality which we call the world:
Water: 1.1bn people lack access to safe fresh drinking water. Remember that next time you're drinking it from a bottle.
Oil: We have all but run out of easily accessible oil. We're now digging to incredible new depths in parts of the world, while stripping entire rainforrests for tar sands in others to accommodate your indifference.
Coal: That we've not run out of, not in Australia anyway. You may have only heard you were running out of it because some countries hadn't sold their sole to industrialism yet. But in other countries... well they used to liquefy it because they had no oil.
Forests: Well obviously they are still here. You seem to not know the difference between "running out" and "have run out of". Maybe google a map of deforrestation to see why you should care about this now rather than just writing an ignorant post.
Landfill Space: It must be nice to have been in a country where you could happily export your garbage. Speaking of, you know why we're hearing less about this now? Well it could be to do with recycling, or maybe it was due to garbage reprocessing, but maybe even the aforementioned exporting. Nope, it's a conspiracy. We're not running out of space, just pile it up anywhere you want.

Look I'd like to keep calling out your ignorant bullshit all day, but I'm sure even slashdot has a word limit in this box so let me summarise:

All of the things you listed are either:
a) still a problem
b) we have found new resources through the use of ever more dangerous and environmentally disastrous methods of extraction
c) we have solved through some technical means.
d) were never a problem in the first place (the world has too many Jesus believers specifically)

In each case having awareness and admitting the problem is the first step to solving it. Your patience has run out? May I suggest medicating yourself. After all your bring should be capable of processing information and solving problems from the moment you're born until you get dementia or die, so I am genuinely concerned for your health since you appear to be giving up on life in general.

You are the problem. Saying your patience has run out implies you may not always have been. That is truly sad.

Re:Running out......again

[Charcharodon]

You sound like one of those people who think peak oil means no oil.

No I'm an engineer. I have a brain.

Peak oil by definition is the maximum output of oil based on the current level of technology. That value has been re-evaluated and raised every decade since they started pulling it out of the ground. When the easy stuff is gone, they pull the harder stuff, etc. We will never reach a point where they pull all of the oil out of the ground. The funny thing that people do not realize is that the planet is constantly making more oil. (Algae is the base stock that eventually turns into oil.) Of course we have out stripped that supply a long time ago. Eventually all the technologically easy stuff will be pulled out of the ground. After that we will have to start synthetic production.....which has already been a thing for 100 years. I do think within the next decade you are going to see a rapid shift away from oil as a fuel for any small device and for automobiles, but there will never be a time in the future where oil is so rare and so expensive that all industry tied to it will have to shutdown. If you have a source of carbon you have oil. Plenty of CO2 in the air according to the NPCs that we can use to make oil.

House prices are a result of two government actions land zoning and regulation, and the subsidy of the banking industry. Loosen the regulations and quit printing money and you will be shocked how quickly the inflated prices of homes will fall, along with half the fake economy, but thems the breaks.

Wild ocean fish has always been more expensive, but it is a lot cheaper and available everywhere unlike when I was a kid. You wanted fresh ocean fish, you weren't going to get it in Missouri. The only reason is that it seems so expensive is that chicken and farmed fish are so much more incredibly less expensive than they used to be.

Re:Running out......again

[Charcharodon]

You are as funny as you are ignorant.

I'll respond to one of your items, because most of the rest are weak talking points and can be countered with a 2 minute Google search.

How pray tell do we have an ever growing population on planet Earth, including the non-rich countries of which you speak, if 1.1B people do not have access to safe drinking water? You do realize even in the crappiest of countries the quality of life has gone UP, not down, for almost everyone. Again do a 2 minute Google search and point out how many countries are dropping in population. I'll give you a hint, the number in the 3rd world is approximately zero.

I bet you a dollar that all the people going on and on about safe drinking water would love for you to send them just the meager sum of the price of a cup of coffee once a month to ensure, insert sad picture of cute dirty little brown kids, will have safe water to drink. (Scam)

Can their quality of life be improved certainly, but are we running out of water, even fresh water...hardly. There are 120 million liters for each person on planet Earth. Pretty sure if people put their minds to it they can find a way to make it drinkable.

Hey would you look at that...a 2 minute search on Google returns 6.57 million results on how to do it.

Have a great day.

Re:Running out......again

[thegarbz]

How pray tell do we have an ever growing population on planet Earth, including the non-rich countries of which you speak, if 1.1B people do not have access to safe drinking water?

That is the dumbest and most nonsense comment on the internet. I'm not sure what's worse, your thought that everyone suddenly dies because of unsafe drinking water, or that the death rate is not independent from birth rate and that I can only imagine if you extend your logic the human race can't grow unless we all live for ever.

I apologize. I said you're the problem and that it looks like you may not always have been. But given your critical thinking ability I was wrong. You clearly always have been. ... Or have early onset dementia.

Re:Running out......again

[Charcharodon]

The population in the third world is going up.
The quality of life for those people is going up.
The longevity of those people is going up.
Though it does seem the average IQ on the internet is going down. Maybe there should be a quiz or something.

You do realize if those 1.1B people did not have "safe drinking water" they would all be dead in 3-4 days. Don't recall hearing about 20% of the planet's population suddenly dying over the weekend.

You do understand that the concept of "safe drinking water" has been a moving target for something like the last 1000 years. Sterilized, purified, carbon filtered bottled water is the gold standard, but it is hardly necessary for survival. Human beings can and do survived on water that people would not think is fit to swim in much less drink.

Epoxy

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Mix the sand with some good binder or epoxy. Yes, it will cost more, that's life.

Re:Epoxy

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure you'll find that expense is not the reason they say it's useless. If you are using epoxy to hold together a basically frictionless substrate what you have can't even be called concrete. It certainly won't perform the same.

The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not very bright are you?

All those countries you listed produce more pollution because they are bigger countries with more people.

Person for person, no one comes close to the resources used by a first world country and America uses much more than most.

Are you sure you aren't WindBourne? This is the same 'argument' he tries to use all the time.

How about the US half it's CO2 per person to get down to China's level? Or decrease it even more than that to the even lower levels of India Brasil etc.

Re: The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[iggymanz]

Another per capital tard

Wrong, it doesn't matter what the USA does any more, not for resource usage and not for carbon load. Only chinese policy and practice do, and soon India's too. Their consumption will be the load civilization puts on the Earth. The u.s. could halve it's resource use and carbon fuel burning... And it won't matter.

Re:The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[110010001000]

The US is the #2 manufacturing country in the world. That is why we have such high CO2 emissions. It really isn't that hard to understand.

Re: The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh adorable, another I'm allowed to because I'm in a small country. You people are funny.

Re:The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is the #1 consuming country in the world. That is why you have the highest CO2 use. You waste the most electricity, waste the most food, use the most oil etc etc.

If you make so much why do you need import the most?
Why do you import over a billion dollars worth of good from China, every single day of the year?
How much of thier CO2 is used to produce the things you consume?

Re: The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

"How about the US half it's CO2 per person to get down to China's level? Or decrease it even more than that to the even lower levels of India Brasil etc."

Um, no. Now go away.

Re:The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i would not do it per person but instead amount of emissions for a amount of goods produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

You have to remember that most of the pollution in China is from factories producing goods, and CO2 is not their biggest problem.. Just do a search for "lead pollution china" or "arsenic pollution china" and you will start to understand how bad it really is there..

This link give you a few images: https://www.marketplace.org/2013/02/08/sustainability/we-used-be-china/what-would-your-city-look-beijings-air-smog-simulator ... It looks really bad, and from experience i can tell you it really is that bad... Have been there a few times and you cough gray crap for a week when you get home.

Re: The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but if the US cut pollution by 20% first, it would give a "moral high ground" for any diplomatic pressure on India or China. As it is? We can pontificate all day long about how "they" need to economize, but why will they listen when we're effectively saying "You should starve so I can feast"?

Re: The US is the worst, it need to cut most.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you cut 20% you would still be way over 1.5 times as polluting. Try halving your level if you want to be taken seriously. Otherwise don't complain when they want to be exactly like you.

Re:Dubai is surrounded by endless kilometers of sa

[serviscope_minor]

They're surrounded by a metric fuckton of worthless shit.

For reference that's about 1.102 imperial fuckloads (or 0.98 long fuckloads).

bull. shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just at the beach last week and there was plenty of sand. This is all just another effort by agenda driven "scientists" to try to destroy the free market, just like they did with so-called "climate change" (aka "global warming", aka "global cooling" aka whatever sounds scaryist this week) and so-called "evolution". Just more fake scientists looking for free taxpayer handouts to study more bullshit. Then libtards wonder why the world is waking up there lies.

Too many people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, this is one of those problems that wouldn't be significant if there weren't so many people on the planet. There can be no "green" or sustainable living with 7 billion+ people on the planet. Population reduction is critical, and will happen in a disorganised manner if we don't do it in an organised manner.

"People are dying"? How?

[kenh]

Seriously, how are people dying because sand has to be imported into Saudi Arabia? Makes no sense, the summary doesn't support the headline, so why bother reading the arrival?

I mean come in - three big paragraph 'summary' that doesn't even support the most dramatic claim in the headline... and by the way being forced to import sand isn't by itself, proof we are "running out of sand", it is proof it isn't conveniently located where we need it. See Sam Kineson's comments on starving people in Africa (spoiler alert - "MOVE to where the food is!").

Re:"People are dying"? How?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you missed this part from the summary:

Sometimes land from private villages is even taken over by these mafias. If they're confronted, violence often results.

Re:"People are dying"? How?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the article is implying that people are killed by the violent methods of the sand mafia.

You the fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are such a fool to criticize others when it's you who is wrong.
THere isn't one kind of pumice. In new mexico there are large deposites of uncommon pumice which is used in the fabic industry.
Since 1987, the use of pumice as an abrasive has increased rapidly because of the demand in the laundry industry to produce faded denim fabrics. New Mexico pumice is well positioned to serve the El Paso area which consumes 750,000 lb/month in the pro- duction of designer jeans; however, more than 50% of the pumice utilized in El Paso is currently imported from foreign sources.

https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/public...

Re: You the fool

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Acid wash jeans went out of style 30 years ago.

Seems like we could make it

[HangingChad]

Sand is basically finely ground rock. That doesn't seem like an insurmountable technical problem by today's standards.

Re:Seems like we could make it

[Insightfill]

Sand is basically finely ground rock. That doesn't seem like an insurmountable technical problem by today's standards.

The problem is two-fold. Features and cost.

1) Not all sand is equal. Not noted here but covered in a recent Planet Money podcast is that the sand that is stolen often has characteristics that make it particularly popular for why it's being stolen. The stolen sand often has a color or texture that makes it wanted elsewhere. For example: much of the beach sand is uniformly the same shape (cubic) and size. This makes it ideal for construction, where a powdery, desert sand wouldn't work. While you can sieve crushed rock to any uniform size, sand is also hundreds of different kinds of "rock": calcium, silicon, and some of it with substructure that changes its characteristics further.

2) It's cheaper to steal (or "buy") than to make. From the podcast, one poorer neighborhood came out one morning to find that much of the public beach had been carted away in the night. Some sleuthing found that a nearby hotel development had a crappy beach, and taken off with it. While some science showed that the sand was "theirs", in many parts of the world with pretty beaches, courts and police are susceptible to bribery or threats. In the story, it leaned more on threats and soon the case waned and the locals had a beach of mud. For the price of a few trucks and a few thugs, the hotel owner got a brand new beach that dramatically increased the value of their property.

While technology COULD solve this problem, it really can only pull this off if you can get the cost to below that of hired force. That's what a lot of the tragedy of the commons come down to; if you can benefit by being a greater asshole and escape the consequences, then you win.

Re:Seems like we could make it

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to make it!
You know whose got a monopoly on irregular shaped, uneroded sand particles? The Moon!

We could solve this crisis by getting Elon to launch rocket loads of moon sand at the middle east and boot strap the whole interplanetary trading economy.

Running out of sand, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ecowarriors at work, manufacturing new crises. Unfortunately it is less effective when one talks about running out of sand and another about towns being buried in excess sand.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/europe/russia-white-sea-shoyna.html

Concrete Also Fixes Oxygen

[NicknameUnavailable]

They found that out during the Biosphere 2 project: as concrete sets over years it sucks in and fixes Oxygen. Would be better if we could come up with a concrete formula which fixes CO or CO2 instead.

Re:Concrete Also Fixes Oxygen

[Actually, I do RTFA]

/. recently has a story about a concrete like formula that fixes CO2. It's not very fast, it's very expensive, but it's pretty strong. Of course, it's still under development

Sand Digger Mafia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a cool band name.

Re:ARABS HOARD THE SAND!

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence or it didn't happen.

What else is new?

[fredrated]

We are sucking everything of any value out of our planet, soon only a lifeless husk will remain.

Re:What else is new?

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

We are sucking ... really? Normally I’m mister gloom and doom, but I’ve just had a really good roast beef sandwich, so I’m feeling up. Every time someone bitches about how humanity has mined eleventy zillion tons of this, that, or the other precious kind of material out of the earth, try to remember that there are eleventy leventy leventy go-gadzillion zillion tons of earth, and eleventy zillion is a minescule drop in the bucket. Also, the earth doesn’t miss it. 99.9999999% of what we’ve mined hasn’t actually LEFT Earth. It’s simply gone from being buried in the top 0.0000001% of the crust to being a few dozen meters higher, and oh, by the way... it’s going right back where it came from in a blink of an eye in geological time.

Human beings are as natural as any other thing. We are a product of nature. We’re just making minor changes to the top 0.0000001% of the earth’s surface for a heartbeat out of time. Earth will blink, and we’ll all be gone. Oh, and as for all the species we’re killing... 99+% of species that had ever lived died before we were born. All the ones we wiped out and all the ones we’re going to will. Be. Replaced. I promise you.

They’ll be replaced by the very thing that made them in the first place: the repetitious and space-filling nature of life itself, and the existence of a niche that stands unfilled. When something dies, it leaves a vacuum, and nature fills it. This happens whether the reason the void comes to be is mankind decides some creature’s skin would look great on his women, or because the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes, or the planet suddenly gets too cold or too warm for too long, or a giant chunk of rock strikes the Yucatán peninsula and blasts out a plume of dust and gas into space that, upon reentry, briefly turns the entire biosphere into an oven for a few hours, and kills everything.

Dinosaurs once roamed the Earth. Along comes an asteroid and by the next day, they’re all dead. Something rose to took their place, and in relatively short order too. When we’re gone, the same will happen again.

For all our bluster and bravado, we’re just building castles out of sand, in the vast span of time that our species has existed, we are metaphorically between crashes of waves upon the shore. The next big wave will wipe most of what we’ve built away, and in another million years, you will never know we were here. Two million, tops.

So please everyone just relax, have a coke and a smile. We’re all just here for a little while. All the birdies and bunnies we off will be replaced. Maybe with rather different ones, but there’s nothing magical, certainly nothing preordained or special about the ones that are here now, except that they happen to be the ones that are here now, and that’s just coincidence. They certainly weren’t meant to be here, or designed to be here except in the sense that they evolved to fill their respective niches.

As did we. Every actor has his turn upon the stage, stumbles through his lines, and then bows out. As shall we.*

Damn... suddenly channeling William Shakespeare and shit... sorry about that. That was one seriously good sandwich.

* Unless we’re wiped out by a gamma-ray burst that sterelizes everything in our part of the galaxy, in which case, yeah, Earth’s dead, but that has probably little to do with us.

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[Anonymous Coward]

With the way plants grown on farms now if the land left behind after the "sand co." shuts down and leaves isn't toxic farmers can go right in and plant crops. The way veggies and such is grown now is under plastic with nutrients being feed by a plastic tubing laid underneath the plastic where the roots of the plants are.

There are other ways to make that land useful using manures on the land to build it back up.

So bad, the sand mafia

[Anonymous Coward]

will sell you sand and steal it back.

Dig up Florida

[Anonymous Coward]

And sell it to the highest bidder. Global warming, hurricanes, rising seas, and trumptards are driving the value of that state to zero.

50 year economic subsidy per capita nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's total pollution output per country not per-capita. Countries which have drastically reduced pollution levels in major cities - the US and Europe - should do little or nothing compared to what 2/3rds of the people on the planet getting a free ride without significantly reducing their pollution levels to near the US and Europe's level as *measured by air quality in the top 10 major cities*.

Per capita means most of the largest countries countries get exempted from doing anything meaningful. Fairness is where the largest population countries reduce their city air quality levels to the lower range found in those same large population countries.

The bright people leading the USA and Europe have been leading by example for ~50 years since 1970 and have had nearly no effect on 2/3rds of the world's population which do nothing. 50 years is long enough for this economic subsidy to the 2/3rds of the world which have done nothing.

By GDP, China, India, Brasil and Indonesia have roughly the same GDP level as the USA.

Per capita nonsense

Re:50 year economic subsidy per capita nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's total pollution output per country not per-capita. Countries which have drastically reduced pollution levels in major cities - the US and Europe - should do little or nothing compared to what 2/3rds of the people on the planet getting a free ride without significantly reducing their pollution levels to near the US and Europe's level as *measured by air quality in the top 10 major cities*.

Spoken like the truly ignorant person you must be.
WindBourne is it? Or at least an equally delusional American.

50 years ago those places were producing close to zero, some still are because they weren't (as) developed. Your kind tries to claim only already developed countries are allowed to pollute at such high levels because {insert completely stupid and illogical reasons}.
The US has been leading by example for 50 years? So why is it still so much higher than all the other Western countries? Why are they still so much higher than developing countries?

Countries are just lines on a map, add more lines make more countries. It's the people that make the pollution. Person for person people in America are the most polluting.
America worse than Europe worse than China worse than Brasil worse than India.
America is the worst and would need to cut more than half to be anywhere near the world average for CO2.

Re:50 year economic subsidy per capita nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's total pollution output per country not per-capita. Countries which have drastically reduced pollution levels in major cities - the US and Europe - should do little or nothing compared to what 2/3rds of the people on the planet getting a free ride without significantly reducing their pollution levels to near the US and Europe's level as *measured by air quality in the top 10 major cities*.

Spoken like the truly ignorant person you must be. WindBourne is it? Or at least an equally delusional American.

50 years ago those places were producing close to zero, some still are because they weren't (as) developed. Your kind tries to claim only already developed countries are allowed to pollute at such high levels because {insert completely stupid and illogical reasons}. The US has been leading by example for 50 years? So why is it still so much higher than all the other Western countries? Why are they still so much higher than developing countries?

Countries are just lines on a map, add more lines make more countries. It's the people that make the pollution. Person for person people in America are the most polluting. America worse than Europe worse than China worse than Brasil worse than India. America is the worst and would need to cut more than half to be anywhere near the world average for CO2.

Jealous much? You sound like somebody from one of this shithole countries and that if you keep repeating your nonsense that someone might just take you seriously. But they won't.

Re:50 year economic subsidy per capita nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Little kids like you don't understand. Let the grown ups talk.

Sounds like a minor engineering problem.

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

There’s a gazillion tons of sand. If the sand is too smooth and round, all you have to do is come up with a cost and energy efficient way to process the sand into something with lots of jagged edges, and two birds are killed with one stone: the problem of there not being enough good, usable sand, and two, the problem with you’re not being rich yet.

The obvious approach, I think, is put the sand in a machine that fires it at high speed into a hard, flat surface, causing the round, smooth grains to shatter into lots of jagged pieces. Then after they strike the surface, you have them fall into a selecting sieve that sends jagged pieces in one direction, (towards the bags where they will be packaged for sale,) and on the other hand towards a recycling loop that sends it to smash into the target again.

That’s just one idea. Here’s another: take the cheap and unusable sand, melt it, then pulverize it. Yes, these both require energy but I’m sure each one can be done, with a little scientific and engineering wizardry, in a way that ends up being so efficient that the devices that are used pay for themselves.

Hell, you can probably pulverize them AND purify them, extracting impurities all in a single process, if it’s designed right.

Engineers and scientists... get on it! There’s fortunes to be made! Oxides of silicon are the twenty first century’s OIL! Just need to work out how to refine it!

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[Anonymous Coward]

Language evolves... get with it.

Lebanon

[Anonymous Coward]

In Lebanon (middle east), we have Sand mafia: many famous beaches are not originally sand beaches (originally were rocky). They buy sand every year after winter (due to loss of sand by storms). This sand sometimes is originally stolen from poor villages in the north. People wake up after a story day and find their "virgin" beach was, ..... , destroyed.

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[sg_oneill]

Its crazy toxic. For the most part Cyanide is used for extracting metals out of sands, although there are others used depending on the type of sand mining, such as Arsenic for gold extraction. Some of its just dumped into the soil (Cyanide over time hopefully gets reacted out into saner compounds, Arsenic is elemental so it hangs about) some into the water table. Its not good.

Time

[spinitch]

Running out of time! Gets wasted by stupid stuff. Like rambling forum posts;)

You know the old saying

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Re:60 percent of the world's population to live in

[Anonymous Coward]

Former sand pits make pretty and evil golf courses with every fairway lined with water.

Need further proof?

[drainbramage]

Stan Lee died this morning.
'Nuff said.

Concrete is not carbon negative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Concrete releases a great deal of CO2 during its manufacture. Specifically the lime is manufactured by roasting the CO2 out of Calcium Carbonate rocks. In addition to the CO2 directly released from this process there is also CO2 produced generating the required heat input.

Concrete is not carbon negative. ... It could be though. Some clever chemists have figured out that it's more energy efficient to make it via electrolysis instead of calcining. This releases CO instead of CO2. The trick is be finding a use for that as a feedstock for another industrial process. I've read repeatedly that CO is used industrially, but am ignorant of its uses.

Sand people

[q4Fry]

"Sand mafias" are groups of criminals that illegally dredge sand from areas where extraction is prohibited. Since they're not following laws, all environmental protocols are ignored. Often rivers are illegally mined, destroying the habitat for fish and fishermen. Sometimes land from private villages is even taken over by these mafias. If they're confronted, violence often results.

But do they come back in greater numbers?